Tag Archives: Saturday Night Live

“Let’s be honest, we’re still figuring what this show is, it doesn’t matter who hosts.”

~Lorne Michaels in the 70s

For the past three weeks we’ve been flooding this site with a lot of obscure people who have hosted Saturday Night Live. We covered the eternal soul-crushing scream that was SNL in the 80s, we’ve talked about hosting decisions that aged poorly, as well as athletes and politicians. But we’ve left out one crucial decade (well, with the exception of Ralph Nader’s entry in the last article). And that would be the 70s. The show was really figuring things out in their first seasons, and that was doubly true for the people they got to host.

Unlike the 80s, where SNL was actively failing and had to reach out for whatever host they could get, the 70s tended to pick hosts that were either established comedians, or people that almost felt like they were chosen as part of a gag. It led to a deeply weird half-decade of casting choices, and feels like a natural point to end our series. So, without further ado, we present…

The SNL Host Series: Most Random Hosts in Saturday Night Live History (Part 6: The 70s Were Really Weird)

For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about Saturday Night Live, as you, our loyal readers who grace these pages to learn about people with silly names and weird burritos, have collectively wondered, “Why?” We…we don’t know. There’s a sort of historical significance to who hosts Saturday Night Live, we guess. Each season’s rosters of hosts are a miniature time capsule of where America was as a culture in that given year. Sometimes that leads to hosts that were famous for like a hot second in the 00s, sometimes it leads to relevant-at-the-time sports figures, and sometimes the 1980s happen and we have to come to terms with that. And sometimes they go with a specific type of famous figure that accounts for by far the strangest category of performer that SNL trots out with any regularity. The humble (hah) politician. SNL has a lot of politicians host, and it’s always weird and awkward. Which seems like a good enough reason to include them in our list of random SNL hosts. So here you go.

“If I’m good at sports, I must be good at nuanced comedic timing on a live national stage, right?”

~Most Professional Athletes to Their Agents

Last week, we went through the literally hundreds of hosts who have graced the stages of Saturday Night Live over the past forty-plus years. And in our searching, we’ve found that…a lot of the hosts are random as hell. As in, there are a lot of people who can go up to you at a party and say, “I hosted SNL once,” to whom you’d reply, “Oh shut up, stop lying to get attention, Francis Ford Coppola.” And while we’ve covered the 80s, and the decisions that aged…not so great, there’s a complete category of performer we’ve failed to mention. They host SNL all the time, are almost never good at it, and have really no business being in comedy. We’re talking, of course, about professional athletes.

The SNL Host Series: Most Random Hosts in Saturday Night Live History (Part 4: Sports Hosts)

“I’m going to do something British and greasy, because that’s apparently what America demanded in 2011.”

~Russell Brand

So far we’ve talked about eleven different people who have hosted Saturday Night Live whose mere names bring forth such grandiose praise as, “Wait Ron Reagan hosted Saturday Night Live once?” and “Like, Ron Reagan, like, the youngest son of the former President who Baby Boomers remember as ‘the ballet dancer’? You said hosted, right?” But we’ve only just scratched the surface. Because over the long, storied history of SNL, we’ve had hundreds of famous and relevant hosts, like Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. And we’ve also had a large handful of hosts that…well, are surprising. And not all of the weird hosts were in the 80s! A lot of them were hosts that we guess made sense at the time, but now warrant blank stares of “wait, they hosted SNL? Like, that famous show? Really?” Here are some of the hosts who hosted SNL at the apex of their cultural relevancy, right before they turned into obscure trivia question answers.

The SNL Host Series: Most Random Hosts in Saturday Night Live History (Part 3: Decisions That Aged Poorly)

As we stated earlier this week, not everyone who has hosted Saturday Night Live ended up being names that carried a lot of weight years down the line. Hell, even today, SNL hosts tend to be a mix of famous former cast members, big stars looking to promote a movie, and the occasional “he’s not super famous, but they clearly brought him in because he’s funny and we needed a funny episode this week.” But as weird as it is that like, Miley Cyrus has hosted multiple times, no decade had more strange hosting decisions than the 1980s, where the show was struggling to survive purely on cocaine, stubbornness, and Eddie Murphy’s weird hiccup-laugh. In fact, even though we talked about a bunch of puzzling SNL hosts from the 80s in the first entry of this series, there are still more to cover. So let’s get ready to huff on some Freon to try to get yourself in the mindset of the show’s casting director from 1981 through 1987 with…

The SNL Host Series: Most Random Hosts in Saturday Night Live History (Part 2: More of the Dreaded 80s)

On April 14th, 2018, John Mulaney hosted Saturday Night Live’s 847th episode. Mulaney, a former writer for the show, was warmly received even if he’s not exactly a household name. Sure, Mulaney had a Netflix stand up show that he was pushing, but there’s a fair chance that twenty or thirty years from now, some writer for AFFotD will be doing some research and go, “Wait, John Mulaney hosted Saturday Night Live? Who the hell is that? And why am I speaking Russian?”

As it turns out, this is not an uncommon phenomenon. Not only does Saturday Night Live bring in a lot of guests who are only on the fringe of famous, they also tend to pull the trigger on a lot of flash-in-the-pans that immediately fade away from our collective consciousness. This fascinates us, so we (probably incorrectly) assume it will fascinate you.

We’ve gone ahead and compiled a list of 30+ people who have hosted SNL, arguably the most influential and important comedy show in television history, that made us go, “Wait…they hosted Saturday Night Live? Who the hell is that?”

Not surprisingly, this is going to take a long time. And we’re going to have to split this into categories, starting with the 1980s, because the 1980s on SNL were, to put it politely, a fucking train wreck. So enjoy the first of six installments of our latest series (which probably won’t be quite as intense as, say, our Re-Awarding the Oscars series) of…

The SNL Host Series: Most Random Hosts in Saturday Night Live History (Part 1: The Dreaded 80s)

“The link between sugar and cavities have never been truly confirmed. I say, let your dentist worry about it.”

~Milton S. Hershey

One of the least controversial statements an American can make is, “Carnivals are fucking awesome.” Be it a state fair, a traveling amusement park, or a Cruise line where many passengers get gastronomical illnesses, carnivals encompass everything American, from the games of chance meant to scam hardworking marks to the impressively unhealthy food inventions that they spawn.

Carnival food in particular has become a bit of a cultural phenomenon in recent years, coinciding with the increasingly “Foodie” culture that many white people Americans have embraced. After the breakdown of the “health food” movement, Americans correctly realized that they had wasted a good portion of the late 90’s eating things like “soy beans” and “wheatgrass” and other strange foods that come in unnatural colors like “green” and “brown.” So Americans everywhere flocked to carnivals to revel in what carnivals do best: shortsighted innovation!

“So how about we take sugar, add some food coloring, spin it until it’s fluffy, and then stuff it in a bag a small child’s head can and will fit in?”

“Brilliant!”

As Americans, it’s our duty to go out of our way to find food that will wage war against our small intestines. And Carnivals, state fairs, and outdoor festivals give Americans the best opportunity to ingest their yearly calorie intake in just a few minutes. And goddamn it if that doesn’t sound American as hell to us. Here are the most American foods you’ll every pay a Carnie to put in your mouth.